


Strange Meeting

by CirrusGrey



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, M/M, Melancholy, Past Character Death, Temporary Character Undeath, episode 195 spoilers, rating for heavy emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29804991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CirrusGrey/pseuds/CirrusGrey
Summary: A strange encounter on an endless sea.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 32
Kudos: 109





	Strange Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "Ragnarok III: Strange Meeting," by the Mechanisms

The ocean stretched out to the horizon, unbroken and still. Above, the red sky bore down, watching, watching.

Jon rowed.

There was no way to mark his progress, no signs to say if he was getting any closer to his destination. The only sound was the quite rush of water around the oars as they lifted above the surface, shifted back, plunged in again. The only sight was the endless nothing around him, the faint ripples his passage caused dissipating quickly in the water.

"Huh. Figures." The words cut through the silence, muttered in a familiar tone somewhere behind him. Jon startled; turned; saw the man approaching. "Even in my dreams, I can't get away from you."

There was nothing Jon could do but stare. "Tim?"

"Hey, boss." Tim pulled up alongside him, lifting his paddle from the water and bracing it against the plastic hull in front of him. He reached out with one hand, grabbing the side of Jon's rowboat to halt them next to each other.

"I..." Jon began, and stopped. He didn't know what to say. Tim looked as he had in those last few days before the Unknowing, tired and worn with streak of determined anger underneath it all. "...I didn't know you kayaked," he eventually settled on, voice weak.

Tim grunted. "Not much. Danny was into it for a few months, a couple years before the Circus took him. Used to drag me out on the weekends. Said it would be good for me to get some fresh air, away from the 'perfidious pencil-pushers of publishing'." He gave a sad, fond smile, and Jon's eyes searched his face, the familiar scarred planes of it. He wanted to tell himself that this was an illusion, that it was impossible that Tim was here, but the knowledge was pressing heavy and inevitable at the borders of his mind that this was very real indeed.

Here, on this endless ocean beyond the edge of time, Jon rowed. Years in the past, trapped in the Archives and bitter for it, Tim dreamed. Somehow, in this strange slip in reality, they had found each other.

"How about you?" Tim continued, and slapped the side of Jon's boat with his free hand. "Wouldn't expect to see you out in a ratty old dinghy like this. You got some outdoorsy rowing team history you've been hiding from us?"

"No, no," Jon said, shaking his head. "It's just a means to an end."

Tim huffed, too sharp to be amusement. "Isn't everything," he murmured, eyes drifting away toward the far distant horizon.

Jon swallowed, throat feeling thick. Tim's face was filled with melancholy and regret; the softer emotions he had never shared with Jon in those last few months, when he was alive.

"Tim?" he asked quietly. "Where are you going?" It felt important.

The smile that spread over Tim's face then was rueful. "For vengeance," he said, and Jon remembered an explosion, and burning heat, and a fierce, victorious smile lost to flames. "You?"

"For love," Jon admitted, and cast his eyes down to the dark water below them. There was still so far to go.

"Heyyyy," Tim chuckled, and Jon looked up at him again in surprise. "Finally got up the courage to say something to Martin, then?"

"I- what?" Jon said. "You knew?"

Tim didn't seem to notice the past tense. "You aren't exactly subtle, Jon," he said, and Jon blushed and looked away. He had tried to keep his feelings hidden, back then, tried to tell himself the looming end of the world was more important than his own heart. Now the world  _ had  _ ended, and his heart was the only thing saving him from ending with it.

When Tim spoke again, his voice was softer, quieter: "Be good to him."

Jon closed his eyes; sighed, heavy with exhaustion and sorrow. "I'm trying."

"Yeah," Tim said, and there was a small, gentle smile on his face. "I know."

Silence spooled out around them for a time, invisible and enveloping. Eventually, Tim took a shallow breath, breaking it.

"What are the odds, do you think?" he asked, and Jon knew he meant for the Unknowing, that Tim was voicing his own fears and doubts in the private space of what he thought was a dream. The answer didn't change, though, for Jon's own quest, so he gave it truthfully.

"Slim."

"Yeah..." Tim said, nodding, resignation etching itself into the lines of his face. "Yeah." He shifted, fiddling with the paddle in his hands, drawing a hollow clunk from the kayak when it bounced against the plastic hull. "I don't think I'm making it out of this," he added, quietly. "I don't think any of us are." He gave Jon a small smile, not quite making eye contact. "I hope you die in peace, at least."

His face was far kinder than Jon remembered it. His words far gentler than any he'd allowed himself to share with Jon, in the waking world, in those final days. "Yeah," he said, voice rough with emotion. "You too."

Tim let out a breath of humorless laughter. "I don't think there is a peaceful end for me. Not anymore."

"Oh."  _ I'm sorry, _ Jon wanted to say, but he knew that wasn't what Tim wanted to hear from him. "I- I suppose... die in honor, then." He had, Jon knew. An honorable, noble death, sacrificing himself for the world. "I hope... I hope it's enough." Enough to make the sacrifice worth it.

The corner of Tim's mouth quirked up, as though to reassure Jon that he understood. "It will be," he said, and then sighed, looking off into the distance again. "Well. I should be on my way. Lots to do. And I'm sure you've got some other poor soul's dreams to haunt, more interesting than mine." He shifted; lifted his paddle and braced it against the side of Jon's boat, ready to push off. "Give my regards to Martin, when you see him."

The rowboat rocked as Tim pushed himself away from it, small waves lapping at the sides. The kayak cut through the water almost seamlessly, slipping smoothly over the surface with barely a ripple. Jon wanted to reach out to it, to reach out to Tim, to pull him back and keep him there. Instead, he just nodded.

"I will."

Tim smiled. His eyes sparkled with it, warm and fond as they had once been, lit with something that may have been nostalgia. He freed one hand from the paddle, lifting it in farewell as he drifted away. "See you around, boss," he said.

"Goodbye, Tim."

The words fell on empty air. Between one breath and the next, Tim was gone, leaving only silence and still water behind. Jon sat there for a long moment, staring at the place where he had been.

Then he picked up the oars, and kept rowing.


End file.
